Preparing your Paper for CaGIS

Process, R&R, Graphs and Illustrations

Eric Delmelle, Nick Bearman

2024-06-01

Workshop Objectives

  • Learn about the journal
    • Timeline for review, acceptance rate
  • Prepare your manuscript
    • research (new methodology)
    • review
    • essay (vision)
  • Contributions & grounded research
  • High-quality visuals

Overview of the CaGIS Journal

  • Official publication of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society
    • [‘…Society supports research, education, and practices that improve the understanding, creation, analysis, and use of maps and geographic information…’]
    • [‘…journal implements the objectives of the Society…’]
      • articles –> innovative research in cartography and geographic information science.

History

  • 1974 : 1990: The American Cartographer
  • 1990 : 1999: Cartography and Geographic Information Systems
  • 1999 : now: Cartography and Geographic Information Science
  • 6 issues per year, ~6-8 articles per issue: ~40 articles/year

Some statistics

Impact factor since 2015

Some statistics

Number of downloads since 2015

Some statistics

Geography of downloads since 2015

Editorial board

Process for publication

procedure for journal review

Acceptance rate

Type of papers

  • research (most common)
  • review
  • essay/vision

The structure of your paper (research)

  • Title/abstract/keywords
  • Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate your paper
    • why do we need this type of research
    • contributions to existing work in the journal or nearby outlets
  • A well explained methodology, with testable hypothesis
  • If new method (e.g. color scheme, symbol size), conduct surveys with subjects
  • Discuss your results (have stakeholders been involved?) -future research

Testing with participants

  • Typically in the US, needs to go through IRB

A study on the aptitude of color hue, value, and transparency for geographic relevance encoding in mobile maps.CaGIS 2023

The structure of your paper (review)

  • Title/abstract/keywords
  • Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate your paper
    • why do we need this review?
      • is the field moving quickly?
      • is it part of a Ph.D. student first chapter?
  • How is the review conducted? PubMed, Google Search?
  • If new method (e.g. color scheme, symbol size), conduct surveys with subjects
  • Discuss your results (have stakeholders been involved?)
  • future research

The structure of your paper (review)

Example of a literature review/essay

Lines between essays and reviews can be blurry.

  • Essays will generally be given to ‘senior’ reviewers who have a solid and wide understanding of the field

documenting literature query

The structure of your paper (essay)

  • Title/abstract/keywords
  • Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate the rationale behind the essay
  • You will need some lit. review to ground your research
  • Approach could be:
    • Analytical and Reflective on different perspectives, theories
    • Argumentative: present or defend a particular argument or viewpoint
    • Critical Evaluation: evaluate existing knowledge, identifying gaps, inconsistencies, or areas needing further research.
    • Theoretical Focus: exploring conceptual frameworks and their implications.
  • Directions for research

Authors order is important

  • Generally, the individual who conducted the majority of the work, should be first.
  • However, in some domains (public health) the adviser goes last.
  • Sandwich authors when contribution is limited
  • Author for correspondance

What is Reproducibility & Replicability?

When the same analysis steps performed on the same dataset produce the same answer. (Turing Way)

by Scriberia for The Turing Way community (CC-BY 4.0)

How do we make our research reproducible? - FAIR:

Findable - Descriptive metadata and persistent identifier (DOI)

Accessible - Code/data could be openly available OR access via authentication and if needed

Interoperable - Data needs to be integrated with other data and interoperate with applications or workflows (Open formats)

Reusable - Documentation and license (Open license - e.g. Creative Commons)

R&R (again)

Codes!

  • Some journals & conferences ask you to submit code along with your paper
  • Anyone (with a similar level of skills) should be able to do reproduce your research and benefit from it.
  • If you do analysis in ArcGIS Pro, you need ArcGIS Pro to recreate that analysis
  • If you don’t have ArcGIS Pro, what do you do?

Preparing flowcharts (\(\frac{1}{3}\))

  • Importance of replicability; a flowchart can really help.

documenting data collection wrangling

Preparing flowcharts (\(\frac{2}{3}\))

replicable research

Preparing flowcharts (\(\frac{3}{3}\))

technical flowchart

Preparing maps (\(\frac{1}{2}\))

  • Figures should be in TIFF or EPS format.
    • Formats such as GIF, JPEG, PDF are not acceptable
    • Images produced in or embedded in PowerPoint / Word not acceptable
  • Resolution must be 600 dpi.

Preparing maps (\(\frac{2}{2}\))

  • Multipart figures should be labelled a), b), c), etc. These should all be included in one image file
  • Do not embed captions within the figure, include these at the end of the manuscript
  • When exporting to EPS or TIFF, all fonts should be embedded.
  • Myriad Pro (sans serif) font is used for figure captions.
  • All figures can be color (there is no additional charge for color).
  • Tables also must be removed from the main text manuscript and saved as a separate file.

Example (how to improve?) (\(\frac{1}{2}\))

Map Doctor Guide, Journal of Maps

Example (how to improve?) (\(\frac{2}{2}\))

Maps - example of effective design (\(\frac{1}{3}\))

Maps - example of effective design (\(\frac{2}{3}\))

Maps - example of effective design (\(\frac{3}{3}\))

Graphs: Simplify!

  • Franconeri, Steven L., et al. “The science of visual data communication: What works.” Psychological Science in the public interest 22.3 (2021): 110-161.

Graphs: What do you want the reader to focus on?

Graphs: Scale axis

  • Message will be different depending on:
    • how you present your data
    • your audience

knitr::include_graphics(“imgs/effectiveGraphB.png”)